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Harper's Library of Living Thought 




Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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http://www.archive.org/details/mattersomeofitsdOOcarr 




MATTER 



AND SOME OF ITS 
DIMENSIONS 



BY 

WILLIAM 

KEARNEY 

CARR 




HARPER X 
BROTHERS 

NEOTORKXLONDON 




A Concept of the Ether 

(See p. 41) 



MATTER 

AND 

SOME OF ITS DIMENSIONS 



BY 

WILLIAM KEARNEY CARR 

AUTHOR OF 

" CAPITALISTIC MORALITY " 

" THE AMERICAN DOLLAR " ETC. 



NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER & BROTHERS 

1913 



33 



7 Q 



G^s^ 



Ori-lWG 



COPYRIGHT. 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

PUBLISHED OCTOBER. 1913 

K-N 



MATTER AND SOME OF 
ITS DIMENSIONS 



ESTIMATED by its results, the French 
Revolution was one of the most important 
epochs in history, since it destroyed feudalism 
and the privilege of blood. In eliminating one 
devouring force, however, it ushered in another, 
modern capitalism, which metamorphoses men 
into machines, destroys their bodies and en- 
slaves their imaginations and their souls. 

The aspect of the Western world, especially 
in America, and east of the Mississippi River, 
has been wholly changed within the last 
twenty-five years. Men of ability and ambi- 
tions no longer find the farms an outlet for their 
energies, and the drift of these to the cities has 
transformed the old American hearthstone into 
1 



MATTER AND SOME 

the radiator of the apartment house, with all 
that that implies. This change in the domestic 
condition has brought about a corresponding 
change in the intellectual complexion of the 
race. 

Countless millions still find ineffable conso- 
lation in the sheltering arms of the old ortho- 
dox faiths. There are a few restless spirits, 
however, to whom the ancient ideals no longer 
appeal, and they are casting about for new 
anchorages. This is evidenced by the un- 
paralleled demand for non-orthodox religious 
and philosophical literature. Everything is 
read with avidity, from the Christian Science 
doctrines of Mrs. Eddy to the literature of the 
so-called "tricks" of the Indian fakirs. The 
inventive genius of man has been so stimulated 
that nothing seems impossible, and many now 
believe that the dream of ages will be realized 
in the production of some physical proof of a 
life beyond the grave. 

However that may be, the revelations of 
modern science seem to demonstrate that not 
2 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

only is there no antagonism between religion 
and science, but that the latter may eventually 
do much towards elucidating this greatest of all 
problems. 

Particularly is this true with reference to the 
electrical theory of matter, which seems to give 
a moral value to the intellectual perceptions of 
modern physicists. Though not yet elevated 
to the dignity of a universally accepted theory, 
it is no exaggeration to say that its advocates 
are to be found among the world's greatest 
thinkers, and that their numbers daily increase. 

The content of the following pages is to be 
regarded in the light of an hypothesis only. 
The facts have been culled from a variety of 
sources, and only those discussed which are 
well recognized in the scientific and philosoph- 
ical worlds. Much time has been expended in 
marshaling these facts, but the writer feels that 
he will be more than repaid if, in the case of a 
single reader, he has dulled the edge of doubt 
or caused one sorrow to seem less real. 
3 



MATTER AND SOME 



CHAPTER I 

FIROM the earliest times men have pon- 
* dered the great problem of their existence 
and their environment. Anaximander, the 
Greek philosopher, as early as the fifth cen- 
tury before Christ, in order to account for 
matter, was forced to postulate the existence 
of an all-pervading substance which, for want 
of a better name, men have in later days 
called the ether. To build up matter out of 
this all-pervading substance he was compelled 
to subdivide it into unit particles, and these 
unit or ultimate particles he conceived to be 
fine precipitations of the ether within the ether 
itself. Thus his system was pre-eminently 
monistic, for with the ether and the precipita- 
tions within itself, or, in other words, with the 
ether alone, he felt that he was able to account 
4 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

for matter in all its aspects. 1 Intensely philo- 
sophic, still the Greek mind of that day was 
unprepared for a theory so advanced, and thus 
the dualism of Democritus, because more read- 
ily comprehended, gradually rose to ascend- 
ancy. This dualistic theory has maintained 
itself even to this day; it is a theory which 
accounts for matter by assuming the existence 
of the eternal indestructible atom vibrating in 
the all - pervading eternal ether — a theory 
which, in a measure, is elucidated by the dia- 
gram Fig. 1. Here is presented a molecule of 
carbonic acid gas. It is composed, as you ob- 
serve, of two atoms of oxygen and one of car- 
bon. Now, only by comparison can we arrive at 
any possible conception of the size of a molecule. 

1 The reader must not fall into the error of believing 
that Anaximander's concept of the ether was that en- 
tertained at the present time. The modern concept was 
ushered in by Dalton, the great English chemist of the 
eighteenth century. Suffice it to say that Anaximander 
felt the necessity of postulating the existence of just one 
all-pervading substance to account for all phenomena, 
and that the revelations of modern laboratories tend 
to confirm the truth of his theory. 
5 



MATTER AND SOME 

The smallest object that can be seen dis- 
tinctly by the human eye at a distance of ten 
inches is 1/250 Of an inch in diameter. The 
resolving power of a good microscope being 
about 1/50,000 of an inch, little trouble is 




bon« 



Fig. 1.- 



-A Molecule of Carbonic Acid Gas: 
Old Concept 



experienced in observing an object so minute 

as the spores of the anthrax bacillus, which 

are 1/24,000 of an inch in diameter. Under 

6 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

favorable circumstances we can see the ex- 
quisite tracings on diatoms 30,000 of which 
are required to make an inch. But the mole- 
cule is a very different matter. Though no 
human eye has ever beheld a molecule, yet 
experiments and indirect measurements have 
been made which give us a fairly accurate idea 
as to its size and weight. One of the smallest 
infusoria known is the Monas Dallingeri, which 
is about 1/6,000 of an inch in diameter. Each 
of its spores is an independent living organism, 
not larger than 1/60,000 of an inch, and yet 
contains 268 millions of molecules. But, small 
as they are, they are veritable giants in rela- 
tion to the atoms, for the molecule may, and 
often does, contain many hundred atoms. In 
the molecule of carbonic acid gas, however, we 
have only three atoms, and this material has 
been selected for our purpose because it is one 
of the simplest of all the many compound 
bodies. The zigzag lines represent a rapid 
vibratory motion of the atoms from the center 
of the molecule to the periphery, and in addi- 
7 



MATTER AND SOME 

tion to this there is a motion of translation 
of the atoms around the center of gravity of 
the system. They are depicted, as you will 
observe, as solid spheres, in accord with the 
universally accepted opinion that they are the 
unit bricks or ultimate particles of which the 
universe of matter is constructed; that they 
are homogeneous, eternal, indestructible, and 
cannot be further cut or divided. This opin- 
ion almost universally obtains to-day, and any 
suggestion of the necessity for a change in 
belief would be received with scant courtesy, 
even though it emanated from a man of repu- 
tation. Still, men of prescience long ago felt 
that the atom, after all, might not be so simple 
a body. 

In 1808 Sir Humphry Davy, at the Royal 
Institution, speculated on the existence of some 
substance common to all the metals, and in 1875 
Prof. W. K. Clifford, than whom no grander 
soul ever lived, said: " There is every reason 
to believe that the material atom carries upon 
itself a small electric current, if indeed it does 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

not wholly consist of this current." Faraday 
again, in 1848, believed that the young men 
of his time would live to see the homogeneous 
atom regarded as a very complex body. 
Finally, Prof. J. J. Thompson, in 1885, in a 
noteworthy address, gave us mathematical 
data which enabled us to say that if the quan- 
tity of electricity usually associated with a 
hydrogen monad atom was consolidated on a 
spherical nucleus 1/100,000 of the diameter of 
the atom, that the mass of the nucleus would 
be 1/1,000 of that of the atom. Here at once 
experiment and mathematical reasoning began 
to confirm the prophecies of the men of a 
prior generation. 

In Fig. 2 we have a diagram of the most 
modern concept of an atom. It is the same 
molecule of carbonic acid gas that we have 
seen before in Fig. 1, but the atom, instead of 
being pictured as a solid, is filled with the 
spherical nuclei of J. J. Thompson. Now 
what are these spherical nuclei , or electrons, 
as they have been termed? To properly con- 
2 9 



MATTER AND SOME 

ceive of them we must resort to analogy. We 
are told that these electrons are infinitely small 
stresses, or strains, or vortices in the ether; 




Fig. 2. — A Molecule op Carbonic Acid Gas: 
Modern Concept 



but these terms convey nothing very definite 
to the mind. Place a mass of quivering jelly 
upon a table, plunge a knife into each side, 
and give the knives a twist in opposite direc- 
tions. A strain, or stress, or torsion exists 
10 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

between the points of the knives, but in no 
sense can the stress, or torsion, be considered 
matter. Now move the stress around a cen- 
tral point in the mass of jelly, and a certain 
amount of bound jelly will be carried along 
with the stress, and the moving, bound jelly, 
because of the motion, will have weight, or 
mass, or inertia. Increase the speed of rota- 
tion of the stress, and the mass of the bound 
jelly will also be increased. In like manner 
we may conceive an exceedingly small vortex 
moving in the ether. This moving vortex, or 
electron, will carry along with it a certain 
amount of bound ether which will increase as 
the motion of the electron is accelerated. 
Thus it appears that mass, so called, is a func- 
tion of speed, since the greater the motion of 
the electron the greater the amount of bound 
ether carried along with it, and the greater the 
amount of bound ether the greater the mass 
or inertia. Electrons, then, are not matter 
in the ordinary sense of the word; that is, 
they do not possess mass other than that 
11 



MATTER AND SOME 

which they seem to possess by reason of their 
motion and their electric charge. 

Electrons are the bodies of the smallest 
masses known to science. They can be de- 
tected only in motion, and their apparent mass 
increases with their speed as they approach 
the velocity of light. In Fig. 3 we have shown 
three positions of an electron speeding around 
the center of gravity of the atom. As it moves 
through the ether it radiates its energy; as it 
radiates its energy it falls towards the center, 
and as it falls towards the center its velocity 
increases. This increase of motion brings 
about an increase of mass until, finally, when 
a velocity is attained comparable with that of 
light, as at c, the electron leaves the system 
traveling at the rate of 110 thousand miles 
per second. 

Kaufmann's mathematical deductions enable 
us to say that when a body has attained a speed 
not greater than twenty per cent, of that of 
light, its mass, hitherto represented by 1, has 
not materially altered; accurately it is 1.01. 
12 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

Increase the speed to one-half of that of light, 
and its mass is but slightly altered (1.11). 
Increase it to 99.9 per cent of that of light, 



V 



\ 




Fig. 3. — Discharge of an Electron 



and still there is relatively little change, for 

the mass has increased by sixfold; accurately 

13 



MATTER AND SOME 

6.6. But just before the velocity of light is 
attained its mass would become infinite. 
Before this occurs, however, something would 
happen; the atom would begin to dissociate, 
the electrons leaving it with enormous velocity, 
and in the manner above described. The 
above statement,, had it been made a few years 
ago, would have described only a theory held 
by a few very advanced physicists. To-day 
the statement accurately describes the con- 
ditions obtaining in an atom of radium. In 
other words, the theory was evolved mathe- 
matically before the discovery of radium, 
which later confirmed it, and practically in 
every detail. In Fig. 4 we have the electrons 
revolving around the center of gravity of the 
system, and some are pictured as having at- 
tained a velocity sufficiently great to bring 
about the dissociation of the atom. You will 
observe that several in their journey outward 
from the center of the atom have had a free 
and unobstructed path, and are leaving the 
system at a velocity of 110,000 miles per sec- 
14 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 




Fig. 4. — An Atom of Radium 



ond. Others, on the contrary, have had their 
momentum impaired by collision, and as a 
consequence are being drawn back into the 
system. 

In Fig. 5 we have a diagram of an atom of 
15 



MATTER AND SOME 

hydrogen. It contains, let us say, 1,000 
electrons, all whirling around the center of 
the system with velocities inconceivably 
great. 

To get some idea of the dimensions of an 
electron, picture the interior of St. Peter's 
Church at Rome filled with 1,000 grains of 
sand darting about in its vast interior. All is 
relative; there is no great, there is no small, 
and so we may say that the spaces between 
the electrons are relatively as great as the dis- 
tances between the planets in our own solar 
system. If we take the weight of the hydro- 
gen atom as 1, we may picture the interior 
filled with approximately 1,000 electrons. The 
atomic weight of carbon is 12; therefore its 
atom contains 12,000 electrons. Mercury has 
an atomic weight of 200, then its atom con- 
tains 200,000 electrons, etc., etc. What if all 
this should turn out to be true? Men have 
been dreaming about some such simple solu- 
tion of the problem from the earliest times. 
Does one substance differ from another only in 
16 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

the number of electrons which its atom con- 
tains ? 

There is something here more stable than 
a hope, a dream, a guess, for the recent in- 
vestigations of physicists lead us to believe 
that when the truth is found it will lie not far 
from what we have just been picturing. You 
have no doubt already asked yourself the 
question: What becomes of the hydrogen 
atom after it has lost an electron? Assuming 
the truth of what has been said, a substance 
whose atom contains 999 electrons cannot 
have the same qualities as one whose atom 
contains 1,000. Is one substance, then, 
through loss of electrons, being transformed 
into another? We cannot reply definitely to 
this question, but we are justified in saying 
that all recent experiments tend to answer the 
question in the affirmative. Establish trans- 
mutation in the case of one element, and we 
have established it in all, since we cannot 
conceive of any rupture of continuity in na- 
ture's processes. That transmutation has been 
17 



MATTER AND SOME 

established in the case of three or four ele- 
ments will probably be admitted by the ma- 
jority of scientists, but the reader must judge 
from what follows whether we are justified 




Fig. 5. — An Atom op Hydrogen 



in saying that all substances are being slowly 
transmuted. 

In Fig. 5 we have an atom of hydrogen gas, 
and have pictured it as filled with 1,000 elec- 
trons, which we must conceive as vortices in 
18 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

the ether, and possessing, among other things, 
all the properties of negative electricity. We call 
it also a neutral atom, because its electrical 
appetite appears to be perfectly satisfied. The 
electron theory has not accounted for positive 
electricity, has not enabled us to isolate a posi- 
tive electron, but we seem justified in saying 
that if the atom is made up of electrons, or 
vortices of negative electricity, and the elec- 
trical appetite of the atom is satisfied, then 
this aggregation of electrons must be bounded 
by a sphere of positive electricity; but whether 
lying without the atom or within the atom, 
this sphere must exactly balance the contained 
electrons. What this positive electricity is we 
do not know, nor have we isolated it, save in 
what we call "ions," which are really aggre- 
gations of electrons. Now, suppose an electron 
speeding at 110 thousand miles per second 
should come in contact with a neutral atom, 
the electron could either attach itself to the 
neutral mass, or displace an electron from the 
system. In the former case we have, as 
19 



MATTER AND SOME 

the result, a negative ion, as in Fig. 6, and in 
the latter a positive ion, as in Fig. 7. The 
diagrams are meant simply to convey the idea 




Fig. 6. — A Negative Ion 

that in one case there is a defect, and in the 
other an excess of electrons. 

Now, bodies which emit electrons are known 
as radio-active. The radiations are of three 
kinds, and are distinguished by the three 
Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma. The beta 
radiations, or electrons, which we have just 
been considering are to be found not only in 
all radio-active substances, but in the Crookes' 
20 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

tube, and here they are known as the cathode 
rays. The alpha radiations are the positive 
ions, and are giants in comparison with the 
electrons, but on account of their size have 
very little penetrating power and relatively 
slow speed, only ten to twelve thousand miles 
per second. The electrons, on the other hand, 
as you will recall, have a velocity comparable 
with that of light, 110,000 miles per second. 




Fig. 7. — A Positive Ion 

The gamma radiations are similar to the "X- 

rays," and move with the velocity of light. 

In addition to these three radiations, radio- 

21 



MATTER AND SOME 

active bodies emit an emanation which has 
many of the characteristics of a gas, since, for 
example, it can be confined in a glass tube, 
can be condensed by liquid air at a tempera- 
ture of — 150 degrees, and yet, unlike matter, 
at certain phases of its evolution it wholly dis- 
appears by transforming itself into electric 
particles. 

Here, then, we have established the fact 
that nature before our very eyes is constantly 
changing the material into the immaterial and 
the ponderable into the imponderable. Startling 
as it may seem, this emanation is both matter 
and not matter. It is ponderable and im- 
ponderable, and similar substances might enter 
into the construction of those bodies which, 
for want of a better name, St. Paul once de- 
scribed as "spiritual." The significance of 
this, however, will appear in the sequel. But 
to revert — substances emitting the above-de- 
scribed radiations and emanations would, after 
a time, and, just as we should expect, undergo 
profound modifications. An atom of hydrogen 
22 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

consisting of 1,000 electrons would, at the loss 
of one, hardly retain the same characteristics 
as formerly, and so we find uranium changing 
into radium, and radium into emanation and 
helium. Professor Rutherford has followed 
radium through the following marvelous 
changes. In the first column we find the 
names of the elements into which radiun is 
successively transmuted, and in the second 
the life period of the elements: 

Products Period 

Radium 1,300 years. 

Emanation 3.8 days. 

Radium A 3 minutes. 

B 26 minutes. 

C 19 minutes. 

D 40 years. 

E 6 days. 

F 143 days. 

The results of Professor Ramsay's labors, 

however, are even more astonishing, since they 

appear to contradict the very fundamentals of 

modern science and open up to us worlds and 

23 



MATTER AND SOME 

possibilities undreamed. When the emanation 
of radium is brought into contact with water 
the former is transmuted into an elemental 
gas, neon. When brought into contact with 
water in which sulphate of copper has been dis- 
solved, it changes into argon. But the changes 
in the water and in the solution of sulphate of 
copper are even more startling, for in the for- 
mer we find an excess of hydrogen gas, say 18 to 
20 per cent., and in the latter there are found 
traces of sodium and lithium. The sodium 
might result from the decomposition of the 
walls of the glass tube used in the experiment, 
but the presence of the lithium can be account- 
ed for onty on the supposition that there had 
been an actual transmutation of metals — a 
view which, we have seen, opposes official 
classical teaching, and for this reason will be 
slow in obtaining a foothold, for in this change- 
ful world the only changeless thing seems to 
be man's antagonism to new facts. Turning 
back to Rutherford's table, we find that the 
element Radium A has a life of 3 minutes, and 
24 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

that the element Radium F has a life of 143 
days. Perhaps a very unscientific way of 
putting it; but is it because the latter supplies 
better conditions for a prolonged existence than 
the former? On this theory, iron and hydro- 
gen would be considered very hardy elements. 
The environment supplied by the earth to- 
day is such that it causes but a slow dissocia- 
tion of their atoms, whereas, in the case of 
radium, the environment is so unfavorable as 
to bring about a decay sufficiently rapid to be 
detected even by our crude instruments. If 
the idea of transmutation of metals is so re- 
pugnant to the orthodox, what is to be said 
of that vast store of energy locked up in the 
atom itself? — a result which must inevitably 
follow, provided our former assumptions are 
correct. For the past decade many of the 
most advanced physicists have been profound- 
ly impressed by the fact that matter is a gi- 
gantic reservoir of energy. An English scien- 
tist recently stated that if one gram of radium 
could be instantly and completely dissociated, 
3 25 



MATTER AND SOME 

it would unlock sufficient energy to throw the 
whole of the British fleet from the Channel 
to the top of Mt. Blanc. To be more exact, 
let us take the lowest velocity at which the 
dissociated particles move in a Crookes' tube, 
say 10,000 kilometers per second, and, know- 
ing the weight of the particle, an elementary 
calculation shows the amount of energy lib- 
erated. The work done by a moving body is 
equal to one-half the product of the mass by 
the square of the velocity. Using this formula, 
we find that one gram of matter instantly and 
completely dissociated would evolve 6,800,000 
horse-power. 

Rutherford says that the energy manifested 
in radio-active bodies is perhaps a million 
times greater than that produced by the vari- 
ous known reactions of molecular forces, and 
again "it seems probable that atomic energy 
is general, and of equal force in all bodies"; 
in other words, that in all matter there is 
locked up this enormous store of energy. This 
is so difficult to believe that Lord Kelvin him- 
26 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

self may be pardoned for having denied it, 
though he knew that a gram of hydrogen gas 
by electrolysis sustained a charge of 96,000 
coulombs of electricity, and that 1/120 of this 
amount sufficed to charge a globe as big as 
the world with 6,000 volts. Verily this was 
straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel — 
to admit the latter and to deny the former. 
In justice to him, however, it should be said 
that just before his death he admitted the 
truth of Le Bon's position, viz.: that matter 
is composed only of condensed energy of a 
special node, whence results its weight, its 
form, and its fixity — electricity being, there- 
fore, only one of the manifestations of special 
energy contained in the atoms. Not the least 
marvelous property of matter is its mobility. 
Apparently stable, yet in reality infinitely more 
sensitive than the most delicately poised ner- 
vous organism. What more suggestive of inert- 
ness than a bar of steel, yet Professor Tyndall, 
by an ingenious arrangement of lever and 
mirror, has shown us the thrills and shivers of 
27 



MATTER AND SOME 

its molecules when the source of heat is not 
greater than that of the hand. Under the 
influence of the heat of the slightest finger 
touch the bar so lengthens that a beam of 
light falling upon its mirror attachment will 
be deflected thirty or forty degrees. If you 
wish to realize how mobile matter really is, 
place your hand near an air or mercury ther- 
mometer and note the result. It requires no 
delicate instrument to convince you that it 
responds instantly to its environment. Here 
is a block of lead, for example, but, looking 
deeper into its nature, we see that it is a 
special form of condensed energy; it represents 
a state of equilibrium between its own internal 
energy and the energies that surround it — 
heat, pressure, and the like. The slightest 
variation of heat and pressure brings about a 
corresponding variation in the block of lead, 
and that the element appears stable is due 
solely to the fact that its environment is stable. 
It must be borne in mind that a very slight 
relative change in temperature will wholly 
28 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

change the appearance of lead, first into a 
liquid, then into a gas, and with yet higher 
temperature into what? There appears to be 
but one answer to the question — back into 
the ether from which it sprang. 

The sensibility of an organism is measured 
by its capacity to respond to stimulation. 
Probably no living creature will be affected 
by a change of environment equal to 1/10 of 
one degree Centigrade. Yet the rise or fall 
of 1/100,000 of one degree will occasion a pro- 
found molecular perturbation in the platinum 
wire of the bolometer. In common with the 
nervous systems of higher organisms, matter 
has a wonderful power of responding to elec- 
trical impulses, but, more marvelous still, ac- 
cording to Professor Bose, is its amenability 
to fatigue and its prompt yielding to the 
effects of exciting and depressing poisons. 
Just in proportion as we try to get at the true 
inwardness of matter, so does our respect for 
it increase; and perhaps the time is not far 
distant when we shall cease to hear the term 
29 






MATTER AND SOME 

" brute matter." But, strange as it may ap- 
pear, the scientist will probably be the last to 
divorce himself from the old preconceived opin- 
ion. There are, of course, many brilliant ex- 
ceptions to this rule; but of all the attributes 
of the human mind, those which characterize 
the average orthodox scientist — the man who 
sees the world only through the medium of the 
microscope, the polariscope, the telescope, or 
the spectroscope — are the least attractive. In 
him, more than all others, is reflected the 
truth of the proposition that the degree of 
receptivity of men's minds to new facts is the 
only invariable thing we know. With him, 
scientific dogmas merit the same superstitious 
reverence as the gods of old; with him, what 
opposes classical teaching is wholly intolerable, 
and with a deprecating gesture and an appeal 
to common sense all unpleasant facts are rel- 
egated to the limbo of hopeless phantasms. 
To illustrate: In 1823 P. S. Girard, an eminent 
French engineer, an orthodox scientist and a 
man unusually assiduous in his devotions at 
30 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

the shrine of common sense, declared that it 
was a violation of that faculty to believe that 
all Paris, even to the fifth floor of her resi- 
dences, could . be furnished with water. 

Majendie knew surgical anaesthesia to be 
impossible. Dumas was convinced that the 
effort to separate the haemoglobin of the blood 
was wasted effort. Pasteur, great as he was, 
believed that substances possessing asymmet- 
ric molecules could never be created by syn- 
thesis, and an appeal to common sense would 
have justified one twenty years ago in assert- 
ing that the transverse apophyses of the verte- 
brse would never be photographed (which with 
the X-rays now is an every-day occurrence). 
But an appeal to common sense is hazardous, 
since the standard of common sense is chang- 
ing from day to day, and, at best, it is not an 
infallible guide, since it is but the opinion of 
the majority on familiar facts, who accept the 
facts simply because they are familiar, without 
in the least understanding them. It seems 
palpably false to say that the majority are 
31 



MATTER AND SOME 

always wrong until they come to accept the 
opinions of a very small minority, and yet this 
is self-evident, for truth first dawns upon the 
mind of some genius a century or two before 
his age, and then slowly and painfully through 
the succeeding years this truth is finding lodg- 
ment in the minds of the majority. Innumer- 
able instances could be given, but two will 
suffice — Ohm and Mayer. The former im- 
mortalized his name by the discovery of the 
laws which underlie the modern science of elec- 
tricity. In a clever little book he describes 
the simple experiments that led him to formu- 
late his great generalizations. Instead of veri- 
fying these experiments, well within the power 
of all teachers of that day, scientists denied 
them, and covered them with such ridicule 
that he lost his berth at his University, and, 
to avoid starvation, accepted a position in 
some minor institution at the munificent salary 
of $250 per annum. Mayer was decidedly the 
first in his field, and did more than any other 
man to raise the dogma of the conservation of 
32 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

energy to the dignity of a great natural law. 
His efforts were not only unsupported and un- 
appreciated, but he was ridiculed, persecuted, 
neglected, and forgotten. So completely was 
his great work ignored that when Helmholtz, 
later and independently, made the same dis- 
covery, he was astonished to find that he had 
been anticipated by many years. Few realize 
that Helmholtz's work along these lines met 
with the same indifference, and that many 
reputable scientific papers of Germany refused 
to publish some of his most valuable contribu- 
tions. The same attitude obtains to-day, and 
hence the theory that matter is a reservoir of 
force will have a thorny path to travel. As- 
suming as true the proposition that matter is 
a reservoir of energy, and that the basis of 
matter is the electron, which is a stress or 
vortex in the ether, are we not justified in the 
assertion that we can not conceive of this 
gigantic stress without a personality of some 
kind exerting it, and hence that it is literally 
true that in the body or mind of some great 
33 



MATTER AND SOME 

Being all things do live, move, and have their 
being? Matter is solely a manifestation, of 
force. Try to divorce " force" from its psy- 
chical significance. You can not do it, for 
men have always realized that force connotes 
a Conscious Will, a sustained, directing, in- 
telligent effort, which even Schopenhauer would 
have called the Will of God, or the Soul of 
the Universe. "This," says the pragmatist, 
" smacks of mysticism"; but so at one time 
"free thinking" was of evil omen. All men 
are mystics save those to whom things are 
what they seem. Matter, then, is a projec- 
tion from a spiritual plane, and since modern 
science tends to confirm that view, it must 
profoundly modify the conceptions of the 
religion and philosophy of the future, and 
give new life and hope to those who cling to 
the old-time views of the existence of a loving 
Father who holds all things in the hollow of 
His hand. 

We have now reached a point in the develop- 
ment of our study so difficult to grasp that 
34 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

some will probably turn back in despair — it 
is the point at which we must throw some kind 
of a bridge over the yawning chasm that sepa- 
rates the physical from the superphysical. In 
the material for the construction of such a 
bridge we can hardly expect to find convincing 
logic in abundance. On the contrary, the ma- 
terial must, to a great or less extent, be com- 
posed of postulates which to a majority of 
minds will appear as self-evident truths. 
Such a truth the writer assumes is embodied 
in the proposition that behind the forces of 
the physical world there exists an absolute 
Will governed by an intelligence compassing 
all that is and is to be. Granted the postulate 
of an Intelligent Motive Power behind the 
movements in physical nature, we know that 
somewhere must be a locus in which that power 
is applied. Whether we have discovered and 
explored, or even touched, that region is a 
question which the reader must determine for 
himself. The value of the present study, if 
value it have, consists in this, that it has 
35 



MATTER AND SOME 

brought physical investigations to the point 
where a junction with the metaphysical prov- 
ince can be made without a strain upon prob- 
abilities, and where, in fact, many phenomena 
hitherto anomalous or inexplicable readily fall 
into line with the trend of the hypothesis. 
Without further apology, then, we shall pro- 
ceed to the description of some phases of mind 
and matter which suggest the existence of 
worlds and universes other than those acknowl- 
edged by the materialistic scientist. 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 



CHAPTER II 

T ET us again picture the universe filled with 
" a perfectly transparent jelly - like mass 
which we will call the ether. Matter has not 
yet begun to appear, nor can it appear till 
the ether is differentiated. Is there any con- 
ceivable way in which ultimate particles may 
be formed in this apparently perfectly homo- 
geneous substance? A resort to analogy will 
aid us materially. Imagine yourself imbedded 
in an absolutely transparent block of glass. 
Now conceive a strain, or stress, extending 
through the glass from side to side, and, as the 
result of this strain, the glass will be filled with 
exceedingly minute nodules, or points of frac- 
ture, which, of course, will be visible. Such a 
phenomenon would be striking in the extreme, 
and you would be tempted to exclaim : Behold, 
37 



MATTER AND SOME 

Materialization! out of the Invisible comes the 
Visible ! out of the unknown comes the known ! 
we see the things coming forth from the things 
that do not appear. Now, suppose this strain 
were relaxed, the glass, by reason of its elas- 
ticity, would resume its former condition of 
transparency, and you would say: Behold, 
Dematerialization! In some such way all 
things in the universe could be maintained in 
the great mass of ether by the will or thought 
of an All-Sustainer, but let that Will even for 
a moment be relaxed, and all things would re- 
solve into nothingness. Is it not now in- 
telligible how matter might be simply a mani- 
festation of force? Recall the block of glass, 
the strain and the result of the strain, the fine 
nodules, and hence matter suddenly appearing 
in the invisible glass. Or think of a tornado 
which has entity sufficient to be seen and felt, 
and yet is but a strain or stress in the invis- 
ible atmosphere. To strain the air requires 
the expenditure of energy, but to stress the 
ether immeasurably more energy is necessary, 
38 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

because the rigidity of the ether is almost im- 
measurably greater than that of the atmos- 
phere. The following illustration by Professor 
Cooke will enable us to gain some idea of 
the rigidity and density of the ether. "The 
rapidity with which wave motion moves 
through any medium depends, other things 
being equal, upon the elasticity of the medium. 
Now conceive two media to be of the same 
density, their elasticities will be proportional 
to the squares of the velocities with which the 
motion moves. Sound travels at the rate of 
1,100 feet per second; light, as wave motion 
in the ether, at 185,000 miles per second, or 
say 1,000,000 times faster. Now suppose the 
ether were the same weight as the atmosphere, 
1/3 of a grain to the cubic inch, its elasticity, 
or power of resisting pressure, would be, ac- 
cording to the rule, 1,000,000 2 times greater. 
But as the capacity to resist pressure on the 
part of the air is fifteen pounds per square inch, 
that of the ether would be 1,000,000 2 times 
15, or 15,000,000,000,000 pounds. Such figures 
39 



MATTER AND SOME 

convey nothing to the mind save that of vast 
magnitude, but to bring it nearer within the 
grasp of the intellect let us take a syringe one 
inch in area, and imagine it ether-tight (such 
a supposition is an absurdity, but for the sake 
of argument let us conceive it as ether-tight), 
what weight on the head of the piston would be 
necessary to drive the confined ether down to 
the density of the air of any ordinary room? 
"One cubic mile of granite would hardly suf- 
fice, and yet the ether is so tenuous that the 
earth speeding around the sun at the rate of 
nearly nineteen miles per second suffers no 
perceptible retardation, though it has a density 
in proportion to its elasticity a million times a 
million greater than air." Now the mind is 
staggered by the effort to picture the power 
necessary to maintain a vortex motion (which 
may be likened to the fine nodule in the glass) 
in a substance so inconceivably rigid as the 
ether. 

Yet an electron is but a vortex, and all sub- 
stances are built up of electrons. One gram of 
40 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

hydrogen gas (15 1/2 grains) means 6,800,000 
horse-power stress in the ether. But mathe- 
maticians tell us that a perfectly homogeneous 
substance, such as we have supposed the ether 
to be, could not withstand such a pressure as 
a cubic mile of granite and retain the exceed- 
ing slight density that the theory demands. 
They calculate, however, that a structural 
ether would satisfy the requirements. 1 An 
ether made up of five other ethers of varying 
densities would, they assure us, be capable of 
withstanding such a pressure, and still retain 
the density which theory demands, viz.; 
about that of the atmosphere, under normal 
conditions. So, instead of conceiving, as we 
have heretofore done, a universe filled with a 
perfectly homogeneous ether, we picture it as 

1 The early, imperfect telescopes showed a plain ring 
around the planet Saturn. Mathematicians predicted 
what later and more perfect instruments revealed, viz., 
concentric rings, composed of particles of varying 
density — such were necessary to give the ring sufficient 
stability to maintain its form. Heterogeneity in a 
motion of this kind tends to stability. 
4 41 



MATTER AND SOME 

filled with five ethers of varying densities. A 
vortex motion in such a substance would as- 
sume the appearance suggested by the frontis- 
piece. The ether whose particles are heaviest 
will revolve farthest from the center, as at 1; 
lighter particles would assume the position of 
ring 2, and the lightest would revolve nearest 
to the center of the system, as at 5. Ring 1 
is the electron to which we have already been 
introduced, and from which all bodies are built 
up, and as this ring, or vortex, contains five 
rings of varying densities, we may say that 
every human body has the potentiality of other 
bodies, or existences, or forms, or dimensions. 
Every organ of the body, the brain, heart, leg, 
and arm, for example, have their exact counter- 
parts in ethers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. This being 
true, we should expect that man, sometimes 
at least, would discover within himself traces 
of another personality, or intelligence; and so, 
indeed, he does, as will appear in the sequel. 
Now the outer ring, or the electrons of physical 
science, is the material plane; it is the three- 
42 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

dimension plane — it is the plane where condi- 
tions may best be described by the terms 
length, breadth, and thickness. But suppose 
that in some way a man could divorce himself 
from this outer ring, would he not stand forth 
on the plane of the second ring, the electron 
of the metaphysician? In casting off the outer 
ring he would eliminate only those charac- 
teristics of himself which might be described 
by the terms length, breadth, and thickness, 
obviously the least important part of himself. 
We never estimate a man's worth by the quali- 
ties which inhere in the physical electrons, for 
only length, breadth, and thickness, and, as 
we shall see later, time and space, reside there- 
in; and all of us unconsciously confirm this 
view of the matter when, as the portals of the 
mad-house swing open, or as the body is low- 
ered into the grave, we recall of the beloved 
departed only those qualities which obtain in 
the second ring, or in the electron of the 
metaphysician. What is death, then, but the 
shedding of this outer ring, leaving its pos- 
43 



MATTER AND SOME 

sessor on a different plane — leaving him with 
a body composed of finer ether, but unaltered 
in every other respect; leaving him with a 
body which St. Paul described as "spiritual," 
with a body which since it is composed of 
finer ether, might conceivably pass through 
substances composed of the coarser ether of 
the outer ring? For if tradition is to be be- 
lieved, the spiritual body of the great Jewish 
Lawgiver passed through the walls of a room 
in which His disciples were breaking bread; 
and if recent reports are to be credited, in the 
seance rooms of modern times incidents have 
been recorded, under test conditions, which 
strikingly resemble those set forth in the 
sacred texts. 

The foregoing suggests not only the concept 
of universes within universes, but it affords a 
physical basis for that faith which has domi- 
nated the learned of the East for countless 
generations — a faith the salient points of which 
have been briefly set forth by a modern writer 
in the following language: "In each of the 
44 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

worlds through which man passes he is de- 
luded by the spirit of that world, and lives in 
its illusions. From these he awakens only to 
pass through an analogous process in the world 
next beyond. Many worlds must be passed 
through, many illusions and delusions per- 
ceived and lived through before that conscious 
something which a man calls himself shall find 
itself in its native world, and learn to know 
itself in that world in a fuller degree than it 
now knows itself in this world. That con- 
scious something which a man call himself has 
an instrument, a physical body, which is of 
the matter and nature of the world in which 
he lives. For a man to live in the five worlds 
he must have as many bodies as there are 
worlds, each body being of the nature and 
matter of the world to which it belongs, that 
he may contact each world and have that 
world react in him." 

Practically the same thoughts have filled the 
mind of the poet. Hear Stephen Philip, in 
"Herod": 

45 



MATTER AND SOME 

"I tell you we are fooled by the eye and the 

ear, 
These organs doth muffle us from the true world 

which lies about us, 
The eye and the ear doth make us deaf and 

blind, 
Else we should be aware of all our dead that pass 

above us, through us, and beneath us." 

This conception of the ether as a heteroge- 
neous instead of a homogeneous substance is 
destined to prove valuable even in the hands 
of the materialistic philosopher, as evidenced 
by the following quotation from the recent 
address of a gentleman of international repu- 
tion in the scientific world. 

"The existence within our world of other 
worlds more tenuous than our own implies 
the existence within that of others more 
tenuous still, and within that another and 
another, on and on in endless evolution, the 
atom of one tenuity being ever the gateway of 
the next, a mutiplex composed of finer atoms. 
So that what we call the ether is in reality an 
46 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

infinite reach of successive tenuities of sub- 
stance." 

The acquaintance of Jesus of Nazareth with 
the potentialities of the material of the second 
ring makes Him speak as a biologist. He 
constantly refers to seed, to birth, to growth, 
and to development. Potently delicate, in- 
deed, is this finer ether that lies within us, since 
it can be molded into a body so tenacious that 
corporal death cannot break it down, and so 
naturally He tells us that anything less than 
a life for others utterly destroys it. The 
wages of sin, He says, is death; and probably 
no greater scientific truth was ever enunciated. 
Let a man live a life for others; let him value 
the moral personality more than the physical, 
and he has acquired an individuality which, 
since it cannot be propagated by cell division, 
cannot be destroyed by cell dissolution. On 
the contrary, let him lead an essentially selfish 
life, and he acquires no other individuality 
than that which can be propagated by cell di- 
vision and hence which can not withstand cell 
47 



MATTER AND SOME 

dissolution. All men have the potentiality of 
this psychic body, which develops within the 
physical body, as long as the conditions of 
development are supplied, and in a few cases 
no doubt the dissolution of its physical in- 
vestiture is felt actually as a relief. But in a 
vast number of cases (as we are to infer from 
the declaration of Jesus that many are called 
and few are chosen) , death would end all, since 
many have acquired no other individuality 
than that which is propagated by cell division. 
It requires no stretch of the imagination to 
grasp this fact. If man is built up of electrons, 
which are whirls in ethers of varying densities, 
then he has the potentiality of as many exist- 
ences as there are ethers. Now mathemati- 
cians, as we have said, assume that there must 
be several, perhaps five; but suppose they are 
infinite — and it is inconceivable that they are 
limited — we have at least conceived a method, 
and a very orderly one, by which man can 
evolve for all time, existing in each ring, or 
plane, or dimension of matter as long as he 
48 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

supplies the conditions of existence, then pass- 
ing on to the next, as we do in our physical 
death. The only shocking element in the con- 
cept is that it places man so low in the scale 
of existence — almost at the very foot of the 
ladder. 



MATTER AND SOME 



TIME AND SPACE 

WE now approach the subject of time and 
space, the absence of which seems to be 
a characteristic of that which moves on the 
plane of the second ring, or, if you please, of 
that which is built up of the electrons of the 
metaphysician. They are a subject by them- 
selves, and though hundreds of volumes have 
been written in explanation, the ordinary man 
who reads remains yet hopelessly confused. 
Still it is possible to imagine, analogically, a 
condition of space other than that which we 
have actually experienced. It does not avail 
us anything to take refuge behind the ex- 
pression — it is inconceivable. Infinity, for 
example, is absolutely inconceivable, yet we 
know that it exists. An infinity before us and 
an infinity behind us are beyond the power 
50 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

of the mind to grasp, yet we know that they 
exist, and that they are as great truths as any 
ever presented to the mind of man. Though 
as difficult to grasp as infinity itself, men for 
ages have recognized the necessity for the 
existence of another dimension in space, for 
without it many phenomena are wholly inex- 
plicable. Some reject it on the score of in- 
conceivability, but logically they would have 
to reject infinity for the same reason. We 
can not comprehend a fourth dimension, but 
analogy will aid in the effort to grasp the idea. 



Let A, B, C, and D represent lineal dimensions 
in space. A and B would give us a figure 
thus — 

A 



And an organism capable of moving only in 

the directions A and B we should call a two- 

51 



MATTER AND SOME 

dimensional organism, or being. A, B, C, 
would give us a solid thus — 




Bodies capable of moving in the directions 
A, B, C, we should call three dimensional, such, 
for example, as our own bodies, and all sub- 
stances that, under ordinary circumstances, 
we can see, feel, and hear. But since A, B, C, 
D, from the standpoint of geometry, would 
represent something that can not be conceived, 
we must here resort to analogy. We may 
conceive an organism capable of moving only 
in the direction indicated by the line A, 
and we should call it one dimensional. An 
organism capable of moving in the directions 
of B and C would inhabit a flat-land, figura- 
tively and literally, and the entrance therein 
of a three-dimensional body would appear to 
52 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

the inhabitants thereof as an astounding mira- 
cle, since to become invisible to the denizens 
of this world a three-dimensional body such 
as ourselves would have to move only up or 
down. The reader will see at a glance that 
the flat-lander is capable of seeing only in one 
plane, and that to him an object would become 
visible or invisible as it was moved within or 
without that plane. "In what way," will be 
asked, "does this aid us to grasp the idea of a 
fourth dimension?" Fix well in mind the 
position of the flat-lander who is regarding the 
entrance of a three-dimensional body into his 
world, and ask yourself the question, "What 
manifestations in this world are analogous to 
the entrance of a three-dimensional body into 
a two-dimensional world?" Only in this way 
can we conceive of a fourth-dimensional body. 
And in this connection let us read a passage 
from a pamphlet written by A. C. Taylor, a 
very practical English civil engineer: 

"Suppose that a cone enters flat-land point 
first and obliquely. Its first manifestations 
53 



MATTER AND SOME 

will be a point; afterward a very small ellipse 
will be formed, which will grow larger and 
larger. The superfices will be formed of ever- 
changing sections of atoms of which the cone 
is formed. In this we see an analogy to 
growth generally in this world. If the cone 
was not strictly homogeneous — say if it was 
of sandstone or steel — the changes in the super- 
fices would be of a wonderful, mysterious char- 
acter, somewhat analogous to chemical changes 
in this world. 

"If this solid body were a living ona it would 
be made manifest by sections of ever-changing 
living cells; and we can imagine such sections 
to represent two-dimensional cellular life. The 
sections of a solid body, such as a hand, might 
result in several two-dimensional figures. The 
conception that these were in any way con- 
nected would be very difficult to the inhabi- 
tants of flat -land. Certain shaped solids 
would result in sections which gradually 
merged one in the other, or in a section which 
gradually became segmented in several parts. 
54 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

There is some analogy between this and re- 
production in this world. Let us now turn to 
this world and imagine how, analogically, 
fourth-dimensional bodies would be likely to 
manifest themselves here. It would appear 
that a fourth-dimensional body passing through 
this world would manifest itself in the form of 
a solid, varying in shape, size, and constitution. 
Vegetable and animal life and chemical changes 
are of this character, and are therefore pos- 
sible manifestations of fourth-dimensional ac- 
tivities. Viewing human life from this stand- 
point, the conclusion may be reached that I, 
as I write this, am merely that section of my 
fourth-dimensional self that happens to be 
passing through this world at this moment, 
and that the whole of me, from my birth to 
my death, is a fourth-dimensional entity; that 
the past and the future are past and future 
only in a three-dimensional sense, and that in 
a fourth-dimensional sense the past and fu- 
tures are present — that is, both what was and 
will be is." 

55 



MATTER AND SOME 

Again we quote from the same author: 
"Our conception of time is due merely to 
the periodicity which exists in nature in the 
alternations of day and night, winter and sum- 
mer, in the swing of the pendulum, etc. It is 
merely a coincidence that duration corresponds 
generally with time periods, a coincidence due 
to the fact that our subjective sense of dura- 
tion depends primarily on the periodicity of 
our heart-beats. That there are other factors 
on which duration depends is a fact that we 
have all experienced, but it seems probable 
that these other factors are also due to some 
form of periodicity, possibly of nerve functions. 
If we were in a condition where we felt no 
bodily pulsations, where we saw, heard, and 
felt no alternating differences, I believe there 
would be no sense of duration, and an infinity 
would be the same as a second. Rhythm is the 
most universal feature of our universe from 
the highest to the lowest, from the simplest 
to the most abstruse detail that we are ac- 
quainted with. But rhythm may be a pe- 
56 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

culiarity of three-dimensional matter only, and 
it is possible that time, therefore, has no 
analogue in a fourth or a higher dimension." 
In other words, that only on the plane of the 
first ring are we conscious of time and space 
relations. 

We are told again that the clearest con- 
ception of a fourth dimension may be reached 
by thinking of it in connection with the non- 
existence of time and space. As the first step 
in the process, let us try to conceive the crea- 
tive principle as pure thought, and not as con- 
crete form, and in so conceiving it we have 
pictured it as existing devoid of its time or 
space elements. This is relatively easy to do. 
Next try to conceive anything as existing di- 
vorced from its time and space relations, and 
we conceive it necessarily as existing in the 
active present, here and now; in fact, in a 
"universal here and an everlasting now." 
The antithesis of this is the conception of 
things as expressing themselves through the 
conditions of time and space, thereby estab- 

5 57 



MATTER AND SOME 

lishing a vast variety of relations with other 
things, such as volume, distance, sequence of 
time, etc., etc. The first is the conception of 
the extreme idealist; the second is that of the 
extreme materialist. The mistake of the first 
lies in this, that he is trying to establish an 
entity with the abstract alone. The mistake 
of the second is that he is trying to do the 
same thing by considering the concrete alone. 
It is clear, however, that only by combining 
the two can we reach that for which we are 
striving, viz.: reality. In other words, the 
materialist tries to conceive of man on the 
plane of the outer ring alone (the concrete), 
the idealist on the plane of the inner ring alone 
(the abstract) ; but as man is composed of the 
outer ring, and all that that contains, clearly 
the effort to regard him from the standpoint of 
any single ring or plane would be as unsatis- 
factory as viewing a part for the whole. Noth- 
ing is surer than that time and space exist, 
but they exist for the three-dimensional, 
physical brain only. The brain of the fourth- 
58 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

dimensional body, however, does not recognize 
time and space, and sees in matter only the 
ultimates thereof; recognizes, for example, 
that the electron, from which all matter is con- 
structed, is simply the expression of an All- 
Sustainer's will or thought, which, as we have 
seen above, is relatively easy to conceive as 
divorced from concrete form. In other words, 
that time, in the sense in which we use the 
word, exists only for those on a three-dimen- 
sional plane ; and this view is almost invariably 
confirmed by the experience of those who have 
been able, even to a slight extent, to eliminate 
their physical selves. It is a significant fact 
that all the mystics and all the founders of 
great systems of religion and morals have 
evinced a singular facility for mixing their 
tenses. Jesus himself is not exempt, since he 
declared that "before Abraham was, I am" 
So much, then, for this entity which, for want 
of a better name, we call the fourth-dimensional 
body, or the body of the second ring. One of 
the characteristics of the ether which enters 
59 



MATTER AND SOME 

into the first ring is that it assumes forms or 
dimensions which may be described by the 
terms length, breadth, and thickness; in other 
words, that the substance of the first ring is 
material. The form or dimension assumed by 
the ether composing the second ring can not 
be described by the terms length, breadth, and 
thickness; that is, it is immaterial. The first 
ponderable, the second imponderable; the 
first ring has the properties of matter, the 
second has not. Such a supposition is by no 
means a scientific absurdity, since we have 
seen that the emanations of radium possess 
properties that lie between the ponderable and 
the imponderable. 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 



DUAL MENTALITY 

TT might be denied that man possesses two 
* bodies, but that he possesses a dual mentality 
is practically universally admitted. The seat 
of intelligence of the physical body, or the 
body of the first ring, is the physical brain. 
But where are we to look for the seat of in- 
telligence of the fourth - dimensional body? 
Suppose we place a subject in a state of deep 
hypnosis, so deep as to be insensible to pain, 
even though we should plunge a white-hot 
needle into the flesh, his physical body is cer- 
tainly not alive in the scientific sense, since 
it does not respond to stimulation. Under 
such circumstances a surgical operation might 
be performed on the most sensitive portions of 
the brain itself, and the subject would be none 
the wiser, so far as sensation is concerned. 
61 



MATTER AND SOME 

But new powers and functions are brought 
into being exactly in proportion as the third- 
dimensional faculties are held in abeyance, 
faculties and functions that far transcend those 
of ordinary consciousness. Give a subject 
under these circumstances, perfectly dead to 
physical surroundings, a premise of any char- 
acter, and he will invariably draw the correct 
conclusion. Give him a glass of water; tell 
him it is whiskey; he drinks it and staggers. 
The writer has witnessed many experiments 
with hypnotized subjects, and he has yet to 
observe a single lapse in these mental processes. 
The mind of the fourth-dimensional body can- 
not classify a series of known facts and reason 
from them up to a general conclusion; but 
give it a general conclusion to begin with, and 
it will argue deductively down to every legi- 
timate inference with marvelous rapidity and 
brilliancy — infinitely above the capacity of the 
subject in his normal condition. The trans- 
formation is often startling; in one moment 
we may be talking with a very mediocre in- 
62 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

dividual, in the next, under hypnotism, we 
may have a genius on our hands. The physical 
brain, it appears, is in no way connected with 
these mental processes. Evidently some power 
or intelligence, a power or intelligence that 
transcends all ordinary experience, is at work. 
The fourth-dimensional intelligence is the real 
genius. We can not play a piano, or ride a 
bicycle, or drive an automobile until our 
" muscles are automatically educated," which 
is but another way of saying that the fourth- 
dimensional mind is the master. It is a mind 
of perfect memory, and what it has once ac- 
quired it can not forget. To give but one of 
thousands of instances: the writer once saw 
an ignorant negro placed in a state of hypnosis, 
and while in this condition ten or twelve lines 
of the Greek text of Thucydides were read to 
him. Five months later the man was again 
hypnotized, and upon command repeated cor- 
rectly not only the words, but imitated with 
astonishing accuracy the reader's voice and 
inflection. Endowed as this wonderful in- 
63 



MATTER AND SOME 

telligence is with the instinct of self-preserva- 
tion, its operations seem incredible. Walking 
along the escarpment of some precipice while 
under the influence of the fourth-dimensional 
mind (or while asleep, as we should say), the 
somnambulist is guided with unerring accu- 
racy, but let him awake — let him become sub- 
ject to the action of the physical brain — and 
he is dashed to death. Instead of being lo- 
calized, it seems to penetrate every part of the 
body, and hence, in the descriptions of its opera- 
tions, we so often hear the term " reflex action." 
But we must beware of this penchant of the 
materialist — this habit of using a single word 
or a phrase to describe a process. It is too 
easy to be comprehensive, and it ought there- 
fore to arouse our suspicions. Diabolical pos- 
session, for instance, was denied by scientists, 
until they coined a word, hystero-demonopathy 
by which to aperceive it. Give them time, 
and the old-fashioned levitation and prophecy 
will creep into the fold, so dearly do the scien- 
tists love a name. A frog's brain is excised; a 
64 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

drop of irritant acid is placed on its back; in- 
stantly an intelligent effort is made to dis- 
lodge the disturbing element by scratching the 
back with the foot. Herbert Spencer and his 
school will tell you that this is reflex action; 
but if this fourth-dimensional intelligence per- 
vades every part of the body, and is, above all 
things, endowed with the instinct of self- 
preservation, then the frog deports himself, 
under the circumstances, exactly as we should 
expect. Few phrases have been more abused 
than "reflex action," and few writers have 
offended more in this respect than Herbert 
Spencer, who considers all instincts reflex 
actions; and as if this were not sufficiently 
comprehensive, he informs us that reflex ac- 
tions are instincts. To do him entire justice, 
however, he often finds it impossible to ad- 
here rigidly to his formula, for when he meets 
an instinct that is obviously not reflex action, 
he tells us that it is compound reflex action. 
The most abstruse phenomena are now clearly 
and readily elucidated by the term telepathy. 
65 



MATTER AND SOME 

But it should be remembered that up to a few 
years ago the orthodox denied the genuineness 
of all phenomena that even smacked of thought 
transference. The great Helmholtz himself 
said in this connection: "Neither the testi- 
mony of the members of the Royal Society, 
nor the evidence of my own senses, leads me 
to believe that thought can be transferred 
from one person to another independently of 
the recognized channels of communication. " 
The most abstruse phenomena, as we have said, 
are now explained by this term, and yet " tele- 
pathy " refers but to a coincidence of psychical- 
ly related states, plus the assumption of a 
causal connection between them; but it de- 
scribes no known process, and hence explains 
nothing. If a sleeping man, for example, has 
a needle suddenly thrust into his foot, the in- 
jured part is instantly and intuitively with- 
drawn. Now, much of our thinking, as will 
be admitted, is done below the plane of con- 
sciousness. Thought begins with the cell 
which chooses, discriminates, and selects, and 
66 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

since the cells permeate every part of the body 
and every cell is endowed with the instinct of 
self-preservation, a pin-thrust will be followed 
by an involuntary and instant withdrawal of 
the injured member. 

This consciousness is known to us not only 
as "reflex action," but as "instinct" — a term, 
by the way, which is used to cloak a vast 
amount of ignorance. But instinct does not 
explain the action of Eumenes, a kind of wasp, 
which in providing food for its young displays 
a knowledge which it could not have acquired 
from an ancestor. Realizing that its days are 
numbered, the female builds a cell in which 
she lays the eggs. Before this cell is sealed 
she fills it with spiders, stung in such a manner 
as only to paralyze their power of locomotion. 
Thus the future larvae are provided with live 
food, a meat, by the by, upon which the mother 
never feeds. We say that here is displayed a 
knowledge for which no ancestral experience 
could have afforded a precedent, since the 
mother invariably dies before the eggs are 
67 



MATTER AND SOME 

hatched. The use of the word "instinct" in 
this case is worse than useless, and only ac- 
centuates our ignorance. This example is quite 
sufficient to illustrate our point, though hun- 
dreds of others could be given among ants 
and bees, and hymenoptera generally. Who, 
for example, can read that truly marvelous 
book, "The Life of the Bee," by Maeterlinck, 
and be willing to accept "instinct" as an ex- 
planation of the phenomenon which is de- 
scribed by the term "spirit of the hive"? 

Our explanations of phenomena are too often 
only names of phenomena. This intelligence, 
one of the objects of which seems to be the 
preservation of life, permeates every portion 
of the bodies of all conscious organisms. It 
cannot be localized; it is ever watchful, ever 
alert, and knows no fatigue. This is a start- 
ling proposition — that a working organism 
never tires — and we should be inclined at first 
glance to question the truth of the assertion, 
yet we are all acquainted with the fact, as the 
following example will show; but so common 
68 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

is it, so familiar a phenomenon, that we have 
ceased to regard it. The physical brain of the 
three-dimensional body would hopelessly fail 
under long-sustained periods of labor, so sleep 
is necessary for rejuvenation, and probably one- 
third of our lives we lie drugged with slum- 
ber. But the brain of the fourth-dimensional 
mind, with all its functions, knows not fa- 
tigue. Regard for a moment the powerful 
array of chest and abdominal muscles that 
carry on the work of respiration. With each 
deep inspiration we lift about 500 pounds 
through the space of about one inch. Through 
the course of a lifetime thousands of tons of 
blood are pumped by the heart through the 
body. These organs are controlled by nerves, 
and the nerves by a superphysical intelligence 
which, fortunately for us, requires no sleep. 
The tremendous amount of intelligent work 
carried on in the body, while the only con- 
sciousness which the average man recognizes 
is dead, is truly astonishing. The physician, 
above all others, should appreciate this, but 
69 



MATTER AND SOME 

unfortunately the majority of the profession 
are unable to shake off the early influence of 
official teaching. As a rule, he looks for an 
external, extrinsic truth, and hence yields to 
a fact (?) without discussion, and, untrained 
in philosophic reasoning, often confounds his 
hasty generalizations with the facts themselves. 

This fourth-dimensional consciousness is the 
very antithesis of the third. Under no cir- 
cumstances can they dwell together in har- 
mony — a fact which was recognized by Philo, 
and which he expressed as follows: "Our 
understanding departs when the divine spirit 
arrives, and it returns after the latter has de- 
parted, because the mortal and the immortal 
cannot dwell together." 

This physical brain looks into the past of 
the human race, and sees there only a record 
of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of 
stupid acquiescence and inane aspirations. 
Delving in the condition of the present, it sees 
only the vice, misery, the injustice, the ap- 
palling wretchedness of countless millions, and 
70 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

concludes that our position here is wholly 
illogical, that life is an unceasing Via Dolorosa 
under the inexorable lash of a tyrannical mas- 
ter, and that we are the children of an irre- 
sponsible fate and the heirs of an unawakening 
death. 

The future yields no brighter prospect, for 
it is merely a question of time before the earth 
"swings rayless and pathless and tideless in 
the moonless air," no longer tolerating a race 
which for a brief moment disturbed its soli- 
tude. The fatal quality of atomic dissociation 
will drag even matter down into the dust. 
Death itself, and love, which is even stronger, 
will be as though they had never been; and 
all that is will be neither better nor worse for 
all the love, all the suffering, all the friendship 
which countless generations of men throughout 
the ages have striven to effect. 

The physical brain is of the earth earthy. 

It dwells in space, recognizes time, and is 

affected only by time and space relations. It 

is that consciousness which is oppressed by 

71 



MATTER AND SOME 

skepticism and by a sense of remoteness from 
God when the littleness of man is contrasted 
with the vastness of the physical universe as 
revealed by modern astronomy. It is that 
consciousness which does not perceive that 
time and space are relative, that the electrons 
within the atom rehearse the order of the 
universe, reproduce the glory of the heavens, 
and that in a single dewdrop there are whole 
systems of whirling suns and planets which 
vastly outnumber those revealed by the most 
powerful of telescopes. 

The fourth-dimensional consciousness, on 
the other hand, is that which, despite the ter- 
rible past, the paralyzing present, and the ap- 
palling future, realizes that our position here 
is logical, feels that our earthly lives connect 
a well-ordered past with a well-ordered future, 
knows that all are but parts of one harmonious 
whole, and that love is the basis of all things. 
To those who have entered this state it is not 
a question of mere belief; they know, and they 
know by the surest method upon which truth 
72 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

can be built — the certitudes of conscious- 
ness. 

The three-dimensional brain is the brain 
which sees the contradictions 1 of life and op- 
presses us. The fourth-dimensional brain is 
the brain that reconciles the contradictions, 
and would lift us up. 

Friendship and love are absolutely necessary 
to a normal existence, and yet when we would 
give physical expression to these sentiments 
our hands are fettered. Solitude and silence 
are appalling to us ; every act of our lives is an 
effort to escape them; but as soon as we grow 

1 Wherever we turn we see the contradictions in 
nature, "Increase and multiply" is an injunction of 
divine origin. Yet turn to Newton, to Young, to 
Fresnel, to Bacon, to Faraday, to Spinoza, to Kant, to 
St. Francis of Assisi, and to that great Carpenter who 
has made holy the name of Nazareth, and they tend 
not to offspring. Maeterlinck tells us that the queen 
bee's brain turns to pulp that her reproductive organs 
may profit; and among the workers, on the contrary, 
those organs atrophy to the benefit of their intelligence. 
Is it possible that with growth of intelligence comes 
decrease of population? Such are the problems evolved 
in the three-dimensional brain to be solved later in the 
fourth to the complete satisfaction of man. 

6 73 



MATTER AND SOME 

out of the illusions of youth we find that life's 
journey is made in a silence as deep and as 
dark as the grave. We reach out our arms for 
the friendship of the soul, for the power which 
binds heart and heart, and which we feel must 
exist, only to be crushed by the realization 
of the truth of Flaubert's dictum, " Nobody 
understands anybody." We would know one 
another better; we would love one another 
better; and yet the effort to bare the heart 
does but increase the already impassable gulf 
between us — between the devoted husband and 
wife, the mother and child, and the dearest 
of friends. Heredity and environment are the 
four walls of the bottomless pit into which 
nature has cast us, and within whose awful 
depths no kindly touch is felt, nor heard the 
echo of a friendly voice. 

The physical brain being a brain of time and 
space, and therefore capable of being in rela- 
tion to but one thing at any single moment of 
time, would very naturally deduce what we 
have asserted to be characteristic of it. The 
74 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

fourth-dimensional brain, on the other hand, 
being above time and space, and therefore 
capable of being in relation to all things at 
any single instant of time, would naturally 
deduce the very opposite. But words utterly 
fail us here. One must experience in order to 
know. Suffice it to say that men holding the 
first view, and suddenly changing their opin- 
ions, have been described on one hand as 
"mad" and on the other as having been 
"born again." Some such illumination must 
have occurred in the case of the apostles who, 
at the moment of the arrest of the great 
Nazarene, denied Him, fearing the incon- 
venience of a Roman prison, and then, within 
a few hours, snapping, as it were, their fingers 
in the face of Rome's authority, daring it to 
do its worst in the way of fire and sword, the 
scaffold and the stake. It would seem that 
this attitude of mind has even a practical value, 
for it can and does lift men above the fear of 
death and the power of pain, and that therefore 
men are justified in making a serious effort to 
75 



MATTER AND SOME 

attain it. Not that every one should live 
upon this exalted plane, for that obviously is 
impossible in our present stage of develop- 
ment, but it is to be desired that all men should 
devote at least a few moments of each day to 
the experiment of throwing off the illusion 
of self. Suppose the time the ordinary man 
devotes to the lip service which he calls prayer 
were expended in an honest effort to supply 
the conditions for the entrance of that light 
which gives a new aspect to the things of life, 
his position here, as Professor Muirhead has 
said, would be rather that of a god than a 
man. 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 



TRUTH 

THE relation of these two minds to what 
we call the " truth" has no doubt occurred 
to the reader, but before we attempt to dis- 
cuss it we must give some answer to the ques- 
tion " What is truth?" It is a concept or ideal 
presented to our minds through the medium of 
language, and as language and ideas develop 
and change, so must change our concept of 
truth. In our present stage of development 
we can differentiate two kinds of truth — the 
absolute and the relative. The latter concerns 
itself with the " conformity of knowledge with 
the reality known," concerns itself with such 
an obvious fact as the existence of this knife 
and pencil, and never asks if they are only 
figments of our brain. The knife and pencil 
are relative truths upon which all sane people 
77 



MATTER AND SOME 

are agreed, and men have reached this con- 
clusion through the operation of their three- 
dimensional physical brains. But the fourth- 
dimensional intelligence might go beyond this 
— might see in the knife and pencil only the 
ultimates thereof, might realize that force and 
not matter in the sense in which we use the 
word is the basis of the universe, might realize 
that under some circumstances they might ap- 
pear as unstable as the wall through which 
passed the body of Jesus of Nazareth. There is 
no concurrence of opinion, then, regarding the 
absolute truth of the knife and pencil, as there 
is in respect of their relative truth. Can we 
say as much in regard to the spiritual? It 
appears not. Indeed, it seems that there are 
no relative truths in religion that have the 
common assent of men. On the contrary, 
faith appears to be the very " matrix of relative 
truth in religious matters"; and hence faith, 
as the wise from time immemorial have taught, 
is the sine qua non of spiritual development. 
If this were better understood, there would 
78 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

be no such divergence of opinion as is char- 
acteristic of the pulpit to-day — a divergence 
which grows with the increase of three-dimen- 
sional knowledge, and which, however, is per- 
fectly natural because, in speaking or writing 
of spiritual matters, we are attempting to 
describe fourth-dimensional experiences in a 
language evolved wholly from the contempla- 
tion of three-dimensional phenomena, and this 
we can no more accomplish than could a deep- 
sea fish relate its temporary experiences in 
shallow water. The two planes, the third and 
the fourth dimensional, are separate and dis- 
tinct, and the divergence of experience, as we 
have said, is so great that only in a separate 
and distinct language can it be recounted. 
The language of the fourth is what we know as 
clairaudience ; it is a telepathic process, and 
only by employing it can we acquaint one 
another with the relative truths which we may 
have discovered. So much, then, for relative; 
but absolute truth in religion is quite a dif- 
ferent proposition, for it concerns itself with 
79 



MATTER AND SOME 

the very fount of things, and hence we can not 
know it. All we can do is to approximate it, 
and we can approximate it nearer on the fourth 
plane than on the third. It is doubtful if in 
this life man can attain to a greater approxi- 
mation of absolute truth than the conviction 
that this universe is the personal life and daily 
experience of the All-Sustainer; than the 
realization that every detail thereof; that 
every movement in every flagella of every 
micro-organism; that every beat of a mother's 
breast, whether of pleasure or pain ; that every 
quake in the planets that fill the void; that 
every pulse in the fiery tides of the myriad 
stars He weaves into one harmonious whole, 
which is His Ego, His Life, and His Personality. 
Briefly, then, the function of the physical, or 
three-dimensional brain, is to establish rela- 
tive truth in matters material, while the func- 
tion of the fourth is to establish relative truths 
in matters spiritual, and to approximate abso- 
lute truth in matters material and spiritual. 
It is not an exaggeration to say that the vast 
80 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

majority of the confusion attending arguments 
on religious or moral questions is to be attrib- 
uted to our efforts to establish absolute truth 
by the operations of the three-dimensional 
brain. The great moral principles about which 
men have so much to say shift from generation 
to generation; they change from day to day, 
and hence are not moral principles at all. 
They are at most only relative truths, and are 
true only in so far as belief or faith in them 
has made them true. Murder, suicide, polyg- 
amy, slavery, and piracy have all been defend- 
ed on "high moral grounds." 



MATTER AND SOME 



THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF FOURTH- 
DIMENSIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 

WE are now acquainted with some of the 
characteristics of the third and fourth 
dimensional minds. We have seen that the 
former, which is the physical brain, often be- 
comes a master of induction, and that the 
latter is godlike in its deductive power. It 
is immaterial what premise you give it, it will 
reason invariably and instantly to a correct 
conclusion — if the premise be false, to a false 
conclusion; if ridiculous, to a ridiculous con- 
clusion — but it must be borne in mind that 
the reasoning will always be correct. 

To the student of medicine the following will 

strongly appeal: To a person in a hypnotic 

state repeated suggestion that he is strenuously 

exerting himself, as in running, or fighting, or 

82 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

lifting a heavy weight, the physical or logical 
effects of such actions would be manifested in 
a quickening of respiration and heart action; 
and these are to be found in the subject in a 
striking degree. If this statement is correct — 
and it is well within the power of any intelli- 
gent and interested man to demonstrate its 
truth or falsity — we can readily appreciate to 
what extent this power would operate as a 
factor in therapeutics. It will not do to ig- 
nore the fact that a simple suggestion will 
affect the involuntary non-striated muscles 
just as would a powerful poison. The aston- 
ishing recent success of many distinguished 
divines and physicians in New York and Bos- 
ton, and elsewhere, eloquently confirms this 
view of the matter. And now to summarize: 
The fourth-dimensional intelligence is im- 
personal, and receives every impression im- 
posed upon it, good or evil, constructive or 
destructive, and acts its part with inimitable 
accuracy. Its powers far transcend those of 
ordinary consciousness, as evidenced by the 
83 



MATTER AND SOME 

presence of new functions, such as mind read- 
ing, thought transference, clairvoyance, and 
the like. It possesses the power to diagnose 
the character of disease and a knowledge of 
the various organs of the body often exceeding 
that of the skilled physician. At times it 
dispenses with medical resources, and accom- 
plishes its results by dwelling upon the diseased 
parts, restoring them to their normal condi- 
tions by repeated suggestions of perfect health. 
To such an extent is it endowed with the crea- 
tive principle that we are justified in saying 
that our bodies are verily what we think them 
to be. The great Lamarck, though pre- 
eminently a man of science, realized this in a 
measure when he said that all growth was from 
within; and the evangelist Mark, though de- 
riving his information from an entirely dif- 
ferent source — the fourth-dimensional mind — 
reached the same conclusion and expressed it 
in the ever-memorable words: " Whatsoever 
ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have re- 
ceived, and ye shall receive." Make no haste; 
84 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

plant the seed of desire; look upon your men- 
tal creation as spiritual realities, and let the 
Divine intelligence do the rest. Hence "he 
who believes shall not make haste," is one of 
the greatest scientific truths ever enunciated. 
There is scarcely a work devoted to the dis- 
cussion of philosophic or religious questions 
that fails to warn us of the destructive power 
of doubt, while impressing upon us the effi- 
ciency of faith. However much intellect is 
to be commended, it has its disadvantages, 
since it increases our doubts, and therefore 
becomes the greatest hindrance to our success. 
All progress is from below upward; hence we 
should expect to hear wisdom from the hum- 
ble and unintelligent. They have not their 
intellect trained to doubt, and hence they often 
see intuitively and instantly what so often 
comes laboriously, if at all, to the better dis- 
ciplined intellect. For example, St. Francis 
of Assisi — who was nearer like Jesus than any 
man probably before or since his time, as he 
wandered through the forests of Italy calling 
85 



MATTER AND SOME 

the winds his brothers and the birds his sisters 
— was very close to the truth of that great 
biological generalization that all are of one 
origin, and constitute one relationship. In all 
his moments of ecstasy (contact with the sec- 
ond ring, brought about by fasting and prayer, 
or perhaps as the result of some slight con- 
genital perversion of the nervous system) he 
realized the divine nature of the very earth 
on which he trod. He saw with the fourth- 
dimensional mind that matter is a projection 
from a spiritual plane — saw instantly and 
clearly what modern science, with its three- 
dimensional brain, has been so laboriously 
evolving through all the centuries — viz., that 
the aggregation of electrons which we know 
as the earth is simply an expression of the 
Will or Thought of the All-Sustainer. The 
earth appears as an expression of the will of 
the All-Sustainer, and as the great is but an 
image of the small, health and whatsoever we 
wish appear in us as the result of our will. 
What the great Creator does on a gigantic 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

scale, we, feebler creators, do on a smaller 
scale — the difference being one of degree, not 
of kind. And Jesus, realizing the tremendous 
creative power of will, or desire, inherent in 
man, when asked where the kingdom of heaven 
was, very naturally replied : " It is within you." 
Hence that "as a man thinketh, so he is," is 
a scientific verity. This is the weak point in 
the position of the Christian Scientist. Under 
the illumination of the fourth-dimensional con- 
sciousness he realizes that time and space are 
only relative, and that matter is not the stable 
thing we conceive it to be. Misled by this 
phenomenon, he asserts the unreality of all 
things, including sin and disease. He fails to 
see that sin, disease, death, and matter are 
stern realities when measured by a conscious- 
ness the seat of which is of like measure to the 
things measured, and that they vanish when 
estimated by an intelligence of a nature un- 
like the things estimated, for man ("manas," 
the thinker) knows in the world of his 
own being, but he knows in that world 
87 



MATTER AND SOME 

only that which is of like nature to him- 
self. 

When the individual is well seasoned in all 
the details and experiences of time and space, 
or when he is peculiarly "well balanced" or 
developed from a physical standpoint, he is 
seldom or never aware of the existence of this 
inner self, or inner ring. Time and space being 
the essential characteristics of the outer ring, 
of the physical self — being, indeed, the very 
instruments through which they function — we 
are powerless to raise the inner self to action 
unless we can eliminate time and space, or at 
least modify our relations to them. Is this 
possible? The materialist will deny it; yet 
the already accomplished suppression of the 
grosser instincts — the slow but sure increase 
of the clairvoyant faculty and the premonitions 
of biology — would seem to justify an affirma- 
tive answer. Too much importance cannot be 
laid upon the depressing effects of time and 
space upon the inner self. In more than one 
instance the writer has heard intelligent men 
88 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

attribute the first weakening of faith to the 
study of astronomy. "The thought of infinite 
space," says Herbert Spencer, "in comparison 
with which our sidereal system dwindles to a 
mere point, appalls me." And so with large 
masses and large numbers generally. Indeed, 
few environments are more calculated to in- 
crease the sense of insignificance, and there- 
fore to weaken the conviction that there is 
anything in man worth carrying over into 
another life, than a vast crowd, a fact to 
which Byron refers in characteristic phrase- 
ology. It is probably no exaggeration to say 
that Copernicus, through the establishment 
of the truth of the heliocentric system, and the 
consequent opening up to the mind of man 
those awful vacuities of space, did more to 
weaken the hold on the old orthodox faiths 
than all other men combined. But it all de- 
pends upon your point of view. It is a pur- 
blind philosophy which says, as Dr. Darwin 
so despairingly declared a short time ago, that 
our earth is but a puny planet circling around 
7 89 



MATTER AND SOME 

a star of inferior magnitude. Relatively to 
others that are larger, of course it is; but ours 
is one, knit in common kinship of material 
with all the rest, and not only not isolated, but 
absolutely unified by that all-pervading ethe- 
real medium of which all things are but tem- 
porary manifestations. But there seems to 
be as much below man as above him. The 
human body relatively to the world of the 
atom is an aggregation of countless trillions 
of sidereal systems. Why not sometimes at 
least compare the body with sometning smaller, 
instead of something larger than itself? or 
why not, as in a state of prayer, modify our 
relations to space and time which, since they 
are characteristic of three-dimensional matter 
only, can but veil the relation of the inner self 
to the All-Sustainer? Man possesses the po- 
tentiality of many and varied powers, but none 
so pregnant with the possibility of good as that 
which enables him to divorce himself from him- 
self, and thus to stand in nearer relation with 
the Absolute. 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 



STIMULATION OF THE FOURTH- 
DIMENSIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS, 
AND ITS EFFECT 

T ET us bear in mind that there are two 
^ methods by which our relations to reality 
may be apprehended. One is by induction, 
through the operations of the three-dimensional 
brain, through scientific research and investi- 
gation, and this is necessarily slow, laborious, 
and tantalizing; the other is by deduction 
through the operations of the fourth-dimen- 
sional brain, and this is swift, immediate, and 
self-convincing. It is said that the normal 
man can reason both by induction and de- 
duction. That he must be more or less of an 
expert in the former method is self-evident, 
since he himself and his whole environment 
are on a three-dimensional plane, and deprived 
of this power he would be as incapable of car- 
91 



MATTER AND SOME 

ing for himself as an insane subject. But that 
the perfectly normal, well-sustained animal, 
man, ever reaches a great fundamental truth 
by deduction is to be doubted. Such, how- 
ever, by rendering himself abnormal may be- 
come a master of deduction, and proficiency in 
this respect seems, at times, to bear some 
relation to the degree of abnormality induced. 
Divergence from the normal may result from 
a blow on the head, a brain lesion, the delirium 
of fever, prolonged fasting, or a congenital 
perversion of the nervous system, and subjects 
of all these conditions have at times acquired 
powers of deduction that far transcend those 
possessed by them in their normal state. In 
fact, even a momentary derangement of the 
nervous system, induced by causes of which 
we are wholly ignorant, will often suffice. 
But whatever the cause, the effect is most 
startling, and even when the veil has been for 
a moment lifted the experience or vision of 
the percipient has been so vivid that it can be 
described in no other language than "sternest 
92 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

reality of life." Numerous instances might 
be cited, nor can the evidence be disputed, for 
it is so abundant, so consentaneous, that we 
must accept the facts or deny the possibil- 
ity of certifying facts by '.< i testimony. 
Divergence from the i r oduced 

and controlled more periv m 

by any other method. Henct 
the most spiritual religions and the most p«i- 
fect systems of philosophy and morals have 
been not only abstemious men, but have in- 
sisted upon placing fast before prayer. Whether 
with or without significance, the fact remains 
that religious and lofty ideals have been pro- 
duced not in beef, but in rice eating, countries 
— that is, among abstemious people — and 
doubtless there is much truth in the vulgar 
saying, "You can not reach the heights on a 
loaded stomach." Anything, it appears, that 
destroys the nervous balance at times, tends 
to bring about more or less of that illumination 
which is characteristic of the fourth-dimen- 
sional intelligence. 

93 



MATTER AND SOME 



SPIRITUAL EXALTATION 

/^"\NLY on two occasions has the writer 
^-^ been the recipient of anything like it, 
and in both it was after periods of great men- 
tal distress. The phenomena, which lasted 
for a few moments only, are impossible to de- 
scribe for the excellent reason that language 
which has been evolved from the consideration 
of the material could not very well suffice for 
the description of superphysical things. Many 
have attempted to convey their impressions, 
but with ill success, and the writer, hoping to 
profit by the failure of others, will only say 
that he was convinced during the illumination, 
and conviction has grown with the passing 
years, that life, which proceeds from the All- 
Sustainer, is immortal — that a consciousness 
exists apart from that which the average man 
94 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

recognizes, that the shadow cast by the glorious 
light of the second ring is what we call the 
psychical body, and that matter is not dead, 
but a living presence. The mental elevation, 
the increased capacity for the perception of 
truth and the feeling of perfect love, trust, and 
confidence are characteristics no less marvel- 
ous. An acquaintance with this illumination 
is by no means new to man. On the contrary, 
it can be traced back until it is lost in the twi- 
light of fable. It was known to the Hindus 
from the earliest times as Kaivalya, to the 
Jews as Jahed, to the Greeks as Monogeneia, 
or " alone-becoming," the power of divorcing 
yourself from your time and space relations, 
hence of placing yourself on the inner ring. 
Jesus, possessing this power to a supreme 
degree, has been called not only the "only 
begotten," but also the " Alone-becoming Son 
of God." 

There is an unbroken record of men from 
Zoroaster to Walt Whitman who have been 
in touch to a greater or less extent with the 
95 



MATTER AND SOME 

fourth-dimensional intelligence. 1 Let us ex- 
amine for a moment the experiences of the 
three greatest characters of history, whose per- 
sonalities for the last twenty-five hundred 
years have dominated the imaginations of all 
men, Gautama, Jesus, and Mohammed. The 
illuminated Hindu says, "They who by stead- 
fast mind have become exempt from evil desire 
and well trained in the teachings of Gautama; 
they, having obtained the Fruit of the Fourth 
Path, and immersed themselves in Ambrosia, 
have received without price, and are in the en- 
joyment of Nirvana." Nirvana is described 
as a " consequence of understanding that all 
things are equal." " There is no real Nirvana 
without All-Knowingness," and though this 
is the language of the enthusiast, and smacks 
of exaggeration, it is an accurate description 
of one phase of the fourth-dimensional experi- 



1 The history of the " Illuminated " in all ages has 
been admirably told by Dr Richard Maurice Bucke, 
in a work entitled " Cosmic Consciousness," to which 
the writer is greatly indebted. 
96 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

ence. Not that men, under these circum- 
stances, know all things, yet they feel that 
they possess such a power; but, hampered by 
the physical plane and the language thereof, 
they are unable to describe even what they 
see. And again: "He who beholds all things 
in the self and the self in all things, he never 
turns away from it." Such experience seems 
common to all mystics, and any one who has 
been without the physical self even for a mo- 
ment can hardly doubt that the great Hindu 
teacher had attained to the superphysical 
plane. The experience of the great Naza- 
rene was, in some respects, at least, similar 
to that of many of the illuminated. How 
often are we told in the descriptions of these 
phenomena that they are accompanied by 
a great light, or flame, or cloud, supple- 
mented by an objective voice of command. 
"And straightway coming up out of the water, 
he (Jesus) saw the heavens rent asunder, and 
the Spirit as a dove descending upon him ; and 
a voice came out of the heavens saying, ' Thou 
97 



MATTER AND SOME 

art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased/ 
and straightway the Spirit driveth him forth 
into the wilderness." Mohammed also heard 
the voice, and he, too, sought solitude in the 
wilderness, in obedience to the commands of 
the Spirit. Hundreds of passages might be 
quoted from the New Testament to prove that 
Jesus was acquainted with and had actually 
experienced the fourth-dimensional illumina- 
tion, but one will suffice. It stands for itself, 
and needs no comment: "Verily, verily, I say 
unto thee, except a man be born arew he can 
not see the Kingdom of God." "I felt like 
one born into a new world" is a common ex- 
pression with those who attempt to describe 
their fourth-dimensional experiences. Let the 
reader picture a man with an intelligent, kindly 
face, inclined somewhat to melancholy, and 
with a nervous system so exquisitely balanced 
that the slightest physical pain or even un- 
pleasant odor would impair its equilibrium, and 
probably that man could tell something of the 
things that lie at the basis of the physical. 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

Such a man was Mohammed. The wilderness 
(solitude), fasting, prayer, visions (so-called), 
the sudden illumination, the voice of command, 
enthusiasm, or faith in the mission and develop- 
ment of the great powers which, fortunately 
for humanity, are turned generally toward 
altruism. All these experiences were his. 
Mohammed was a perfect type of the second- 
birth man, in so far as he experienced all the 
successive steps toward the attainment of 
that end. Perhaps the sequence of steps was 
as well marked in the cases of Gautama and 
Jesus, but unfortunately only fragments of 
their lives have come down to us. But the 
list of names in the ancient times is a long one. 
Those interested will be well repaid in reading 
anew the Old Testament, especially of Moses, 
of Gideon, of Isaiah, and of Esdras. No race 
has been without this illuminating intelligence. 
The Chinese, in 604 b. c, produced one of the 
greatest lights in the person of Lao-tsze. So 
powerful is the conviction that this fourth- 
dimensional consciousness is a separate entity 
99 



MATTER AND SOME 

that it is often addressed as a different per- 
sonality. Christ called it the Father, and 
Lao-tsze the Tao, or the Supreme Being. He 
says: "He who is skilful in managing his own 
life travels on land without having to shun 
rhinoceros or tiger, and enters a host without 
having to avoid buff coat or sharp weapon. 
The rhinoceros finds no place in him into 
which to thrust his horn, nor the tiger a place 
in which to fix its claws, nor the weapon a 
place to admit its point. And for what rea- 
son? Because there is in him no place of 
death. He who has in himself attributes of 
Tao is like an infant. Poisonous insects will 
not sting him, fierce beasts will not seize him, 
birds of prey will not strike him. ,, This is no 
exaggeration — without one's self, one is on a 
higher plane — and it has been demonstrated 
that wild animals will not attack one, even in 
a partial state of hypnosis. This has been 
proven time and again in India with the 
venomous snakes and the most ferocious beasts 
of prey. In Paris, a few years ago, a woman 
100 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

in a state of hypnosis was placed in a cage with 
three lions; instead of attacking her, they 
seemed awed, as though in the presence of 
some strange and unearthly power. The 
prophets of old were men pre-eminently of this 
character; hence we can readily believe that 
Daniel availed himself not of supernatural, but 
of transcendental means. One of the most 
striking figures of the first century after Christ 
was Apollonius of Tyana. Little is known of 
his early life, but in the zenith of his powers 
his name was a household word throughout 
the limits of the Roman Empire. He was the 
only man, it appears, who incurred the enmity 
of the brutal Domitian and escaped unscathed. 
In the account of the meeting between the 
Emperor and the sage, the fact is very appar- 
ent that Domitian knew he was in the presence 
of no ordinary man, and feared to put into 
execution his threats of death. Apollonius 
realized that his wonderful powers (he was 
credited with miracles as great as those attrib- 
uted to Jesus) were not supernatural, but 
101 



MATTER AND SOME 

within the grasp of all men, for when asked by 
Domitian how he could predict with such ac- 
curacy the plague at Ephesus, replied, "Be- 
cause I live simply and eat little, did I the 
first perceive its approach.' y The feat which 
most astonished his contemporaries was the 
foretelling of the moment and manner of the 
tyrant's death — an instance of clairvoyance 
so true to every detail that it impressed the 
unbridled imagination even of that day. It 
will not be contended, of course, that every 
man who eats little and lives simply can acquire 
the power to divest himself, even partially, of 
his time and space relations. A congenital, 
unstable nervous organism, fostered by ab- 
stemiousness, is no doubt the key that unlocks 
the secret of Apollonius's success. 

The Middle Ages, no less than ancient times, 
have furnished their quota of illustrious men, 
among whom may be mentioned Las Casas, 
St. John of the Cross, Pascal, Spinoza, Sweden- 
borg, Madame Guion, Roger Bacon, and Jacob 
Boehme. There is not a dull page in the lives 
102 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

of any of them, but that of Boehme is prob- 
ably most suggestive. Of humble birth, prac- 
tically without education, save that which he 
had himself acquired, following the humble 
calling of shoemaker, yet he has been styled 
the founder of German philosophy. " Sitting 
in his room one day, his eyes fell upon a bur- 
nished pewter dish which reflected the sun- 
shine with such marvelous splendor that he fell 
into an ecstasy, and it seemed to him as if 
he could now look into the principles and deep- 
est foundations of things." Note the brilliant 
light, the increased capacity for the perception 
of truth, the " All-Knowingness " which seem 
to characterize so many of the illuminated. 
Hartmann says of him: "He learned to know 
the innermost foundation of nature, and ac- 
quired the capacity henceforth to see with the 
eyes of the soul into the heart of things, a 
faculty which remained with him even in his 
normal condition.' ' 

Speaking of his first illumination, he said: 
"The gate was opened to me that in one- 
103 



MATTER AND SOME 

quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than 
if I had been many years together at a Uni- 
versity." The majority of men would cer- 
tainly deny that there was on record a prece- 
dent for the formulation of scientific truth from 
the homologies of transcendentalism, and yet 
it is believed that a diligent study of meta- 
physical resemblances resulted in the discovery 
of gravitation, the laws of force and orbicular 
motion. In other words, that the great in- 
ductions of Sir Isaac Newton were based on 
the intuitional perceptions of this master of 
mystics, Jacob Boehme. 

William Law says: "The illustrious Sir 
Isaac plowed with Boehme's heifer, and in 
deducing planetary attraction from the facts 
of Love, Newton used these words, 'Idemque 
dici possit de uniformitate ea, quod est in 
corporibus animalium. , " This quite suffices 
to prove that the gulf which separates New- 
ton's mind from the mind of the average 
physicist of this day and generation is pro- 
found, indeed, and it recalls a significant passage 
104 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

from Professor Muirhead's " Ideals of Science 
and of Faith": "Time is ill-spent in bemoaning 
lost opportunities, but one can scarcely refrain 
from reflecting for a moment what our knowl- 
edge of the universe might have been to-day, 
and how our sociological conditions might have 
stood at present, had psychology, rather than 
physics, been our chief study — had we exam- 
ined and developed the latent spiritual facul- 
ties within us at least pari passu with our 
investigations of the material world without 
us, instead of adding the incubus of further 
complexity to the heavy-funded debt of igno- 
rance with which humanity stands at all times 
weighted." 

While under the influence or domination 
of the three-dimensional brain, it is effort 
wasted to attempt to read Boehme's works; 
one must get without one's self to do so suc- 
cessfully. Students of Browning will no doubt 
appreciate this observation, since many, per- 
haps, realize that the deep meaning of the 
poet may be grasped only in certain prayerful 
8 105 



MATTER AND SOME 

moods. It is said of Browning, that when 
asked on a certain occasion to interpret a 
seemingly obscure line in one of his poems, he 
replied: "I can not do so now, though at the 
time I wrote it, it was very clear to me." 
But Boehme labored under no such disad- 
vantage, for from the time of his second il- 
lumination until his death there was no lapse 
in his fourth-dimensional powers. In bringing 
to a close the brief sketch of this remarkable 
man, we cannot do better than submit Claude 
de Saint Martin's estimate of him: "I am not 
young, being now near my fiftieth year; never- 
theless, I have begun to learn German, in 
order that I may read this incomparable author 
in his own tongue. I have written some not 
unacceptable books myself, but I am not 
worthy to unloose the shoestrings of this won- 
derful man, whom I regard as the greatest 
light that has ever appeared upon the earth, 
second only to Him who was the light itself." 
Dante, again, that divine singer of the Mid- 
dle Age, realizing that the fourth-dimensional 
106 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

consciousness was a thing apart, addressed it 
as Beatrice. And here is an illustration of the 
power of suggestion to warp the judgment and 
the critical sense. Students and interpreters 
of Dante regard Beatrice as his ideal of woman- 
hood; some, indeed, go so far as to declare 
that she was a charming young girl with whom 
the poet in his youthful days was madly in- 
fatuated. Students, accepting the judgment 
of supposed riper scholars, see no inconsistency 
between these views and Dante's estimate of 
her as set forth in the following lines: " A lady 
appeared to me robed with the color of a 
living flame; I turned me to the left, with the 
confidence with which the little child runs to 
his mother when he is frightened, or when he 
is troubled, to say to Virgil: 'Less than a 
drachm of blood remains in me that does not 
tremble.'" And again: "When I was near the 
blessed shore the beautiful lady opened her 
arms, clasped my head, and plunged me in 
where it behooved that I should swallow the 
water. . . . Beatrice was standing with her 
107 



MATTER AND SOME 

eyes on the eternal wheels, and on her I fixed 
my eyes from there above removed. Looking 
at her, I inwardly became such as Glaucus be- 
came on tasting of the herb which made him 
consort in the sea of the other gods. Trans- 
humanizing can not be signified in words; 
therefore let the example suffice for him to 
whom grace reserves expression. If I was 
only what of me thou didst last create, love 
that governs the heavens, thou knowest, who 
with thy light didst lift me!" Strange, in- 
explicable conduct, if Beatrice had ever dwelt 
in the flesh; but with Beatrice as the fourth- 
dimensional consciousness Dante's text is per- 
fectly intelligible. Those interested in the 
works of the poet would benefit by reading 
them anew, since many passages, wholly in- 
explicable on the old assumption, become as 
clear as the noonday sun. In this case, as in 
so many others, we have the sudden bright 
light or flame, the increased capacity for the 
perception of truth, and the source of all 
Knowledge. 

108 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

The materialist will say, no doubt, that such 
literature and such authors might have served 
a purpose in ancient time, but now have no 
place, nor are they produced in this practical 
age. Let us step across the intervening cen- 
turies and ask Henry Thoreau's experience: 

"I hearing yet who had but ears 

And sight who had but eyes before, 
I moments lived who lived but years 

And trust discern who knew but learning's lore. 
I hear beyond the range of sound, 

I see beyond the range of sight 
New earths and skies and seas around, 

And in my day the Sun doth pale his light.' ' 

This is one of the finest descriptions extant 
of the result of the first stage of the fourth- 
dimensional illuminations. Many in this day 
see as Thoreau saw, but unfortunately for con- 
temporaries they have not his literary ability, 
and so they live out their lives in obscurity. 
Walt Whitman, in any age, would have been 
regarded as a most unusual character, and 
his " Leaves of Grass," his greatest work, as 
109 



MATTER AND SOME 

the experiences of one who had seen and heard 
not as other men. 

"Hast never come to thee an hour, 
A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all 

these bubbles, fashions, wealth? 
These eager business aims, books, position, arts, 

amours, 
To utter nothingness?" 

Most of us at some time in our lives have 
been touched by a similar spirit, but how many- 
can say with Whitman: 

"I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of 

my own, 
And I know that the Spirit of God is the eldest 

brother of my own, 
And that all the men ever born are also my 

brothers, 
And the women my sisters and lovers, 
And that a Kelson of creation is love." 

Still the pragmatist asks, "For whose bene- 
fit these idle dreams?" — incapable ever of real- 
izing this truth that material advantage will 

not weigh in the scale with the knowledge that 
110 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

makes us free. But Whitman was no idle 
dreamer; unspeakable joy was in his heart, 
and he had the power to reflect it in others. 
Of pleasing personality, voice, gesture, and 
manner, he was a favorite with both old and 
young, most people recognizing in him two 
separate and distinct personalities — the one 
human, for above all things he was a man; 
and the other superphysical, that power which 
enabled him to attract animals, and instantly 
quiet a fretting child or to fill an aching heart 
with gladness. The power of Love, which the 
fourth-dimensional consciousness always makes 
a sine qua non, was not with Whitman a beau- 
tiful day dream to solace his soul, for he lived 
it in his own daily life, and he advised others 
to do so. He held that it was the only exist- 
ence, and that the ordinary way was misery 
and folly. 

But of the modern illuminated man, Honore 
de Balzac was perhaps the most perfect speci- 
men. The world admits his peculiar genius, 
for it knows not just where to place him; just 
111 



MATTER AND SOME 

what niche he fills in the Hall of Fame is still 
a debated question. A man is to be pitied 
who sees in Seraphita or Louis Lambert only 
the operations of the third-dimensional brain. 
Parsons says that Lambert was Balzac him- 
self; and Taine, puzzling over Seraphita, de- 
clares that "his instrument was intuition, 
that dangerous and superior faculty by which 
man imagines or discovers in an isolated fact 
all the possibilities of which it is capable, a 
kind of second sight proper to prophets"; and 
Taine was justified in his criticism, for in Louis 
Lambert Balzac says (of himself), " Though 
naturally religious, he did not share in the 
minute observances of the Roman Church; 
his ideals were more particularly in sympathy 
with those of Saint Theresa, Fenelon, several 
of the fathers, and a few Saints, who would 
be treated in our day as Atheists or Heretics. 
He was unmoved during church services. 
Prayer, with him, proceeded from an impulse, 
a movement, an elevation of spirit that fol- 
lowed no regular course; in all things he gave 
112 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

himself up to nature, and would neither pray 
nor think at settled periods. He speaks of 
the link which connects the visible to the 
superior world; he acts, he sees, he feels 
through his inner body" — the fourth-dimen- 
sional intelligence. Again: " Humanity moves 
hither and thither in the natural world — the 
three-dimensional plane — which is fixed neither 
in its essence nor in its properties; the spiritual 
world is fixed in its essence." In the " Country 
Doctor," in his analysis of the character Fos- 
seuse, Balzac proves that he was well ac- 
quainted with the fourth-dimensional intelli- 
gence, and that its manifestations, sometimes 
at least, are to be attributed to an unstable 
nervous organism. He says to Genestas: 
"Everything reacts upon the Fosseuse; if the 
weather is gray and somber she is sad, and 
weeps with the skies; she sings with the birds, 
grows calm and serene with the blue heavens; 
a delicate perfume is to her an inexhaustible 
pleasure. I have seen her the livelong day 
enjoying the fragrance of mignonette after 
113 



MATTER AND SOME 

one of those rainy mornings which draw out 
the soul of flowers. Sometimes I find the poor 
girl weeping at the scene our mountains give 
at sunset when innumerable magnificent clouds 
cluster about their golden peaks. 'Why do 
you weep, my child?' I say to her. 'I do not 
know/ she answers; 'I am like one bewildered, 
looking up there. I don't know where I am, 
I see so far.'" At the age of twenty-two he 
tells Genestas that she is perishing — "a victim 
to the too-responsive fibers of an organism 
which is overstrung, or too delicate." 

Of all men, however, who have written on 
the subject, Edward Carpenter is the most 
instructive — instructive because, unlike the 
majority of the illuminated, he possessed a 
keen, analytical mind, unusual literary ability, 
and the rare faculty of putting things clearly. 
His contact with the fourth-dimensional plane 
does not appear to have been as complete as 
many others — St. John, for example — else the 
account of his experiences would have been as 
involved as that of the "Beloved Disciple." 
114 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

He says: "I really do not feel that I can tell 
you anything without falsifying and obscuring 
the matter"; and in this respect he agrees with 
those who have felt the illumination of the 
inner life. In speaking of the Eastern and 
Western types, he says: "The West seeks the 
individual consciousness — the enriched mind, 
ready perceptions and memories, individual 
hopes and fears, ambitions, loves, conquests — 
the self, the local self, in all its phases and 
forms — and surely doubts whether such a 
thing as a universal consciousness exists. The 
East seeks the universal consciousness, and in 
those cases where its quest succeeds, individual 
life and self thin away to a mere film, and are 
only the shadows cast by the glory revealed 
beyond." Again: "If I should be asked — as 
I have sometimes been asked — 'What is the 
exact nature of this mood, this illuminated 
splendor, of which you speak?' I should have 
to reply that I can give no answer. All that 
I can say is that there seems to be a vision 
possible to man, as from some universal stand- 
115 



MATTER AND SOME 

point, free from the obscurity and localism 
which especially connect themselves with the 
passing clouds of desire, fear, and all ordinary 
thought and emotion, in that sense another 
and separate faculty; and a vision always 
means a sense of light, so here is a sense of 
inward light, unconnected, of course, with the 
mortal eye, but bringing to the eye of the mind 
the impression that it sees, and by means of 
the medium which washes, as it were, the in- 
terior surfaces of all objects and things and 
persons — how can I express it? And yet this 
is most defective, for the sense is a sense that 
one is those objects and things and persons 
that one perceives, and (the whole universe) — 
a sense in which sight and touch and hearing 
are all fused in identity. Nor can the matter 
be understood without realizing that the whole 
faculty is deep and intimately rooted in the 
ultra-moral and emotional nature, and beyond 
the thought region of the brain." In view of 
what has been said about the necessity for 
assuming the existence of a fourth dimension, 
116 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

the following extract is of especial interest: 
" There is another idea which modern science 
has been familiarizing us with, and which is 
bringing us towards the same conception — that, 
namely, of the fourth dimension. The sup- 
position that the actual world has four space 
dimensions, instead of three, makes many 
things conceivable which otherwise would be 
inconceivable. It makes it conceivable that 
apparently separate objects — e. g., distinct 
people — are really physically united; that 
things apparently sundered by enormous dis- 
tances of space are really quite close together; 
that a person or object might pass in or out 
of a closed room without disturbance of wall, 
doors, or windows. If this fourth dimension 
were to become a factor of our consciousness 
it is obvious that we should have means 
of knowledge which, to the ordinary sense, 
would appear simply miraculous. There is 
much, apparently, to suggest that the con- 
sciousness attained by the Indian Gnanis in 
their degree, and by the hypnotic subjects 
117 



^ 



MATTER AND SOME 

in theirs, is of the fourth - dimensional or- 
der." 

Tennyson, for whom the whole civilized 
world entertained the most profound respect, 
confirms the experience of the East in the fol- 
lowing remarkable passage: 

"A kind of walking trance I have frequently 
had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been 
all alone. This has often come upon me 
through repeating my own name to myself si- 
lently till, all at once, as it were, out of the 
intensity of the consciousness of individuality, 
the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and 
fade away into boundless being; and this not 
a confused state, but the clearest of the clear- 
est, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of 
the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where 
death was an almost laughable impossibility, 
the loss of personality (if so it were) seemed 
no extinction, but the only true life." 

J. William Lloyd declares that "with the 
intellectual illumination comes an indescrib- 
able moral elevation, and intense and exalted 
118 



OF ITS DIMENSIONS 

joyf ulness, and, along with this, a sense of 
immortality; not merely a belief in a future 
life — that would be a small matter — but a con- 
sciousness that the life now being lived is 
eternal, death being seen as a trivial incident 
which does not affect its continuity. Further, 
there are annihilations of the sense of sin and 
an intellectual competency, not simply surpass- 
ing the old, but on a newer and higher plane." 
But the reader's patience need not be further 
taxed in the matter of examples, for probably 
he has already thought of Emerson, of Pushkin, 
of Finney, of Jefferies, of Tyner, and of many, 
no doubt, known only to himself — of people 
in humble station, but whose lives are filled 
with the joy that passeth all understanding, of 
men and women who can truly say: 

" There is no peace except where I am, 
Though you have health — that which is called 
health — yet without me it is only the frail 
covering of disease; 
Though you have love, yet if I be not around and 
between the lovers is their love only torment 
and unrest; 

119 



MATTER AND DIMENSIONS 

Though you have wealth, and friends, and home — 
all these shall come and go — there is nothing 
stable or secure which shall not be taken 
away." 

Wordsworth called the consciousness of the 
inner ring, which is simply another dimension 
in space, the "Blessed mood"; Gautama called 
it "Nirvana," and Jesus the "Kingdom of 
God"; but these were merely terms by which 
they sought to express the inexpressible. 
Language, we know, fails us when we attempt 
to picture the experiences of those who have 
been initiated into the mysteries of the inner 
life. But why limit the dimensions of matter — 
if four, why not five; if five, why not infinite; 
and if infinite, then we have not even begun 
to dream of the potentiality of that little dif- 
ferentiated portion of energy which we call 
the "Ego." 

THE END 






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